isdnbutton(1)

NAME

isdnbutton - traffic light to start/stop ISDN connection

SYNOPSIS

isdnbutton

DESCRIPTION

isdnbutton This is a small X based program that allows for

easy activation and deactivation of the demand-dialing feature of

the Linux-ISDN subsystem. It can also be used to initiate connec

tions without using the demand-dialing feature.

It displays a symbolized traffic light. When the light is

red, no demand-dialing is possible; when it is yellow, demand-di

aling has been enabled but there is currently no connection using

any of the ISDN network devices; when it is green, there is at

least one active connection using an ISDN network device. You can

interactively switch between red and yellow/green by clicking

with the left mouse button into the window; the right mouse but

ton pops up a menu to select between different actions --- this

can be used if you want to connect to different providers.

isdnbutton is intended to be run inside of the FVWM button

bar, but you can also run it stand-alone. It has to be run as

root or using sudo(1), super(1) or some other suid wrapper in or

der to access the ISDN and network devices!

At the very least, you will have to provide two shell

scripts in /etc/isdn/isdnbutton. connect will be called when de

mand-dialing is to be enabled (i.e. when the traffic light is

red) and disconnect will be called when it is to be disabled

(i.e. when the traffic light is yellow or green). This can be

done either by pressing the left mouse button or by selecting the

shell script from the menu that pops up when you press the right

mouse button.

Typically, connect will have instructions for adding an

outgoing telephone number (e.g. "isdnctrl addnum isdn0 out

555-1234"), and setting up a default route (e.g. "route add de

fault gw 192.168.0.1 metric 1"); disconnect will then have in

structions for removing the default route (e.g. "route del de

fault"), for removing all outgoing telephone numbers (e.g. "isd

nctrl delnum isdn0 out 555-1234"), and for hanging up (e.g. "is

dnctrl hangup isdn0").

Whenever you depress the right mouse button, isdnbutton

will scan all of the files in the /etc/isdn/isdnbutton directory

for a magic signature (this signature can appear anywhere in the

file). If it finds the string `ISDNBUTTON:' it will interpret the

following words as the title for a menu entry (note! there must

be a space character after the colon!). If the directory contains

at least one file that contains this signature, then the connect

and disconnect scripts will not be added to the menu unless they

also contain a signature. (You can still call connect and

disconnect by pressing the left mouse button, though!)

You can use this feature to add arbitrary shell scripts to

the menu. Use alphabetically sorted filenames to determine the

order in the menu. You can even dynamically rebuild the menu when

needed. The directory gets re-scanned whenever the right mouse

button is pressed.

A lot of isdnbutton's behavior can be configured with ap

plication resources. A sample application resource is installed

at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Isdnbutton.

It is highly advisable, that you configure syslogd(8) to

log all messages of priority warn or above. The output should not

only go into a log file, but also into either the xconsole(1)

window or on a free virtual console! isdnbutton uses the facili

ty user. All error messages, that are output when connect,

disconnect, or any of the other scripts is run, will be sent to

syslogd(8).

RESTRICTIONS

This program works fine, if you connect to just a limited

number of ISP's. For anything more advanced than this, you are

likely to exceed the limits of isdnbutton. If you think, you

have come up with an unusual trick for using ISDN-button in more

advanced applications, I would like to know about it.

FILES

/etc/isdn/isdnbutton/*

SEE ALSO

syslogd(8), xconsole(1), isdnctrl(8), sudo(1), super(1).

AUTHOR

This program was written by Markus Gutschke <gutschk@uni

muenster.de>, Schlage 5a, D-48268 Greven-Gimbte, Germany.

This manual page was written by Roland Rosenfeld

<roland@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be

used by others).

Debian Project DECEMBER 1998

ISDNBUTTON(1)